Higher-order thinking

Higher-order thinking is thinking that goes beyond rote memorization of facts and details and basic comprehension of a concept. Higher-order thinking requires skills such as reflection, logic, critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity. In the twenty-first century, school curricula have placed much emphasis on teaching higher-order thinking skills to students. In the United States, curriculum standards such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) encourage teachers to push students to ever higher levels of thinking. The ultimate goal is to teach students to think critically about what they learn, take the concepts they learn and transfer them to new situations, and figure out how to work through and solve problems. These are skills that students need not only to succeed in school but also to succeed in life. Although many frameworks for higher-order thinking exist, a common one that educators use to teach students these thinking skills is Bloom's taxonomy.

Background

In 1949, American educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and a team of his colleagues began to develop a set of educational objectives that teachers could use to help students reach specific learning goals. The result was Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Classification of Educational Goals, which was published in 1956 and has since become known simply as "Bloom's taxonomy."

Bloom's taxonomy included six categories of learning, some of which require more complex thought than others. Lower-level skill categories include knowledge, comprehension, and application. Knowledge involves recalling or identifying information. Comprehension involves gaining an understanding of information, such as by arranging or organizing information. Application involves using information in some way, such as to perform a task. Higher-level skill categories include analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. Analysis involves breaking information into pieces to figure out how they fit together. Evaluation involves making judgments. Synthesis involves putting information together in new or creative ways.

The idea behind Bloom's taxonomy—and any other learning taxonomy—was to provide a framework that educators could use to structure student learning and push students from a basic grasp of knowledge and comprehension toward more complex levels of critical thinking and problem-solving. Educators had always asked students questions or tested them to assess their knowledge of a topic or concept. Bloom's taxonomy, however, gave teachers a map of sorts for developing more complex questions and teaching students higher-order thinking skills.

Bloom's taxonomy had a lasting effect on education. Even in the twenty-first century, many teachers in classrooms across the United States continue to use the taxonomy—or an iteration of it—to formulate lesson plans and assessments that engage students' higher-order thinking skills. Researchers have found that students who are asked to engage in higher-order thinking actually learn better than students who simply memorize information, repeat it back, and move on.

Overview

In 2001, one of Bloom's former students, Lorin Anderson, and her colleagues developed a revised version of Bloom's taxonomy. The revised version uses verbs to describe the six levels of cognitive thought. From lower-order to higher-order thinking, they include the following: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate (or design), and create. The six levels represent thinking as an active process and show the progression from simply recalling information (remembering) to demonstrating the transfer of knowledge through the development of something new or innovative (creating). The lower levels provide a foundation on which to build to the higher levels. Following is an overview of the skills students are expected to master at each level and examples of questions teachers might ask to stimulate higher-order thinking.

1. Remember: This level focuses on recalling information. Students may be asked to recall information they learned previously, such as a math formula or a state capital, or to locate specific information in a text. When asking "remember" questions, teachers often use words such as identify, list, define, state, choose, or recite. Example: List the steps in the water cycle.
2. Understand: This level focuses on constructing meaning. Students may be asked to infer something from a text or to organize or arrange facts in a certain way. When asking "understand" questions, teachers often use words such as paraphrase, summarize, infer, classify, or show. Example: Summarize the events that led to the outbreak of the American Revolution.
3. Apply: This level focuses on taking knowledge learned in one context and applying it to another. For example, students may be asked to use knowledge of the past to make a prediction about the future or to use a certain procedure in a given situation. When asking "apply" questions, teachers often use words such as apply, use, solve, predict, or explain. Example: Predict what will most likely happen if Earth's global temperature continues to increase.
4. Analyze: This level focuses on breaking down information into its constituent parts and determining how those parts relate. At this level, students truly begin to utilize higher-order thinking. Students may be asked to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information in an argument or to identify connections between events or ideas within or across texts. When asking "analyze" questions, teachers often use words such as analyze, distinguish, differentiate, or infer. Example: Based on the argument, what inference can you make about \the author's point of view on year-round schooling?
5. Evaluate (Design): This level focuses on thinking critically. Students may be asked to make judgments about information based on certain criteria, critique opinions or arguments, or look for inconsistencies in information. When asking "evaluate" questions, teachers often use words such as assess, check, criticize, defend, or judge. Example: Which speaker's argument on gun control is stronger? Defend your answer with specific supporting evidence.
6. Create: This level focuses on synthesizing, or combining, new information with prior knowledge or information from multiple sources to develop new ideas or innovative thoughts. Students may be asked to compose a written work, formulate a hypothesis, or construct a model. When asking "create" questions, teachers often use words such as develop, compose, hypothesize, invent, produce, or role-play. Example: Rewrite the ending of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee as if Atticus Finch had won his case at trial.

To foster higher-order thinking, teachers should routinely ask questions that target skills in the upper levels of Bloom's taxonomy. Higher-order thinking is important because it challenges students to distinguish fact from opinion, consider points of view that may differ from or oppose their own, and solve problems. The more teachers encourage higher-order thinking in the classroom, the better students' higher-order thinking will become.

Bibliography

Brookhart, Susan M. "Assessing Higher-Order Thinking: Five Ws and an H." How to Design Questions and Tasks to Assess Student Thinking, ASCD, 2014, pp. 1-10.

“Critical Thinking and other Higher-Order Thinking Skills.” University of Connecticut, cetl.uconn.edu/resources/design-your-course/teaching-and-learning-techniques/critical-thinking-and-other-higher-order-thinking-skills/. Accessed 18 Dec. 2024.

“Higher Order Thinking: Bloom's Taxonomy.” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Learning Center, learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/higher-order-thinking. Accessed 18 Dec. 2024.

Lasley, Thomas J. "Bloom's Taxonomy." Encyclopedia of Educational Reform and Dissent, edited by Thomas C. Hunt et al., vol. 1, SAGE Reference, 2010, pp. 106-109.

Thomas, Alice, and Glenda Thorne. "Higher Order Thinking." Reading Rockets, 2009, www.readingrockets.org/topics/comprehension/articles/higher-order-thinking. Accessed 18 Dec. 2024.